The Book of Ishness

Between 1911 and 1915, very
early on in his creative journey, J.R.R. Tolkien produced a
particularly intriguing and original series of illustrations that he
assembled in a notebook entitled “The Book of Ishness”.

A pure product of his
imagination, and surprisingly abstract or conceptual for an artist
know mainly for his narrative work, he nicknamed them
Ishnesses, to underline their, in some sense, visionary
nature. Amongst these drawings, some later accompanied the genesis of the “Silmarillion” and his mythological tales, in
the years that were to come.